TIME and the NEW YORKER parody

[Ben Zimmer]

On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 6:20 AM, paul johnson wrote:
>
> from Wiki, still well remembered in the '60s
> *Wolcott Gibbs* (March 15, 1902 -- August 16, 1958) was an American
> editor, humorist, theatre critic
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drama_critic>, playwright and author of
> short stories <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_story>, who worked for
> /The New Yorker <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Yorker>/ magazine
> from 1927 until his death. He is best remembered for his 1936 parody of
> /Time <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_%28magazine%29>/ magazine,
> which skewered the magazine's inverted narrative structure. Gibbs wrote,
> "Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind"; he concluded the piece,
> "Where it all will end, knows God!"

It did all end, in 2007, when Time finally retired its inverted syntax:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/business/media/12time.html

Mentioned at the end of my Language Log post:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004860.html

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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